Friday, July 10, 2009

6-Minute English: The Answers

Hello everyone!As promised, here are the answers to the Six Minute on House Swapping:1. The right answer is the USA. Fifteen per cent of house swappers chose the U.S., twelve per cent the U.K., and eleven chose Australia.2 (a) "free" and (b) "become somebody else." or "inhabit/live someone else's life"3. (a) "accommodation" and (b) "vehicle" or "car".4. The two types of accommodation mentioned were "houseboat" and "apartment".5. You "don't have to live out of a suitcase".6. "local" and "tourist".Congratulations to José Maria and Gianfranco. Sorry Giorgia: you got question 1 wrong, but you did very well on the other questions. So let's organise an evening out soon and I'll buy a round of drinks for those who got the right answers.While we're on the subject of listening, I am just looking at the Learning English page on the BBC. And there's a good section on Listening and Pronunciation. See it here. For current Level 6A students, I recommend doing Unit 6, "Eating Out", as it is very close to what we have been doing in our book. Concentrate on word stress as you listen What kinds of words are stressed? Try the Speak 1 exercise in order to practise.For everyone else, try all the listenings and exercises.Finally, let's try something quite different. We have been discussing the difference between 'like' and 'as'. When do you use which? Here is a short exercise that I have taken from the Concordancer:

And, _____ Sir Geoffrey and Mr Heseltine, he routinely sets up federalism as a straw man to knock down.

Astonishingly, they both work full time, Jenny _____ a district nurse, Michael a doctor.